He will observe them in their hours of leisure, when, attired in
their national costume, consisting of white duck breeches, banjos,
and striped shirts with high collars, they gather beneath the rays
of the silvery Southern moon to sing their tribal melodies on the
melon-lined shores of the old Oswego; and by day he will study
them at their customary employment as they climb from limb to limb
of the cottonwood trees, picking cotton. On Sunday he will arrange
and revise his notes, and on Monday morning he will sail for home.
Such is the program of Solomon Grundy, Esquire, the distinguished
writing Englishman; but on his arrival he finds the country to be
somewhat larger than he expected--larger actually than the Midlands.
So he compromises by spending five days at a private hotel in New
York, run by a very worthy and deserving Englishwoman of the middle
classes, where one may get Yorkshire puddings every day; and two
days more at a wealthy tufthunter's million-dollar cottage at
Newport, studying the habits and idiosyncrasies of the common
people. And then he rushes back to England and hurriedly embalms
his impressions of us in a large volume, stating it to be his
deliberate opinion that, though we mean well enough, we won't do
--really. He necessarily has to hurry, because, you see, he has
a contract to write a novel or a play--or both a novel and a play
--with Lord Northcliffe as the central figure.
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